IV – The Deep

The winds whipped through the pinnacles of the buildings, whistling through spires and antennas and broken pieces of pipe – and this was above, above Haven’s bustling streets and the traffic and the people who scurried about as little insects tend to, upon the earth they claimed for their own.

Below…

It was another world, down there.

A world of stench, and unpleasant sights, and something growling in the darkness.

For a woman, and a unit, accustomed to disgusting things, even this was a little bit much.

I should have never volunteered, she thought, and sighed.

The stench of something incredibly rotten reached her nostrils, causing her to sneeze. Behind her, one of the men tried to stifle his sneeze. Instead, it came out as a barely-audible squeak.

“Having fun back there?” she tossed over her shoulder.

Joss Dylan sniffled and wiped his nose. “Hotter than a furnace down here and it smells worse than road kill in the Wasteland.” He smirked. “Not that I have anything against the Wasteland…”

“Could be worse,” someone else said. “Could be raining.”

Private First Class Kitana Praxis glared at the man who had spoken. “Decker, shut your mouth.”

“Why are you in charge again?” Decker asked her.

The other Private had asked herself that many times this morning already. Unfortunately, the only conclusion she could reach was that she was completely out of her mind.

“Because I was the only one dumb enough to volunteer to lead the unit,” she hissed, and pointed her rifle directly at him. “Nobody else wanted to, and I’m sure that we could do without you. Would you enjoy becoming Metal Meat for insubordination?”

Decker scoffed at her. “No,” he responded.

Dylan snickered.

Kitana ended up knee-deep in something wet, and wrinkled her nose involuntarily, attempting not to consider what exactly it could be. She sloshed through, not-so-eagerly followed by her unit, and switched on the light attached to her shoulder. She flexed her shoulders, hearing the snap-pop of armor ligaments, and crept forward, rifle up, gazing down its barrel.

“How repulsive…” Private Vonehitchbarski “Hitch” Fraust grumbled.

Kitana glanced at him; Hitch was renowned for his complaints. His accent, however, was pleasant to listen to: a crisp accent that softened his vowels and sharpened the peaks of his consonants. Although many had interrogated him one way or another, no one knew where Hitch came from.

Joss passed the rumor of him being from the North.

The darkness was absolute, but the beams of many flashlights pierced it easily to reveal bizarre things floating on the surface of the water. The soldiers’ thoughts strayed from the wonder of what they could be and remained focused on the task ahead.

It didn’t bother Kitana in the least.

X

This is Kitana Praxis:

Sister of Ashelin Praxis, eldest daughter of Baron Jared Eastonsen van Praxis, private in the Krimzon Guard, intelligence and reconnaissance officer, volunteer Nemesis Unit-5 commander.

Right now, she’s none of these things.

She’s simply Kitana.

Kitana Leann Praxis never thought of herself as the baron’s daughter. She never thought of herself as very pretty or smart; but she could pick up a book on any subject and learn it quickly. One of these books just happened to be about street fighting, a sport since outlawed by her father ever since she cold-cocked a man, breaking his jaw, and caused a lawsuit from his family.

She has trained for years: the muscle on her legs and arms isn’t from steroids or body building. She is a soldier, a malicious one who is not afraid to press the attack.

She has feminine wiles, sure, and the men are – or rather, were – fully aware of that. She prefers not to flaunt them, however, choosing instead to allow them to be intrigued.

If they’re still with her after three days, they might be worth it.

Still, despite what they think of her at first glance, she prefers the darkness of the sewers or the fierceness of a firefight with the Metal Head menace over flirting with a man. At any time. She doesn’t even dance; unless, of course, the monkey drills and ceremonies they performed with fourteen-pound weapons counted as a synchronized dance of some sort.

She only wants to be Kitana; someday, perhaps, she will find someone who can match her temperament.

Right now, she’s only herself.

A persona of strength.

X

It was a very long drop from the upper tiers of the testing room to the concrete floor below, which was littered with ranks of hover tanks and tanks with treads and enormous Hellcat cruisers. Jak had no desire to fall – although, admittedly, it was causing him to quickly become dizzy. The struts supporting the narrow maintenance catwalk were very creaky, the catwalk itself was loose, and to top it all off, the whole thing swung from side to side.

“Dizzy” was hardly the word, come to think of it: instead, the words nauseous and horrible came to mind, especially when the center of the catwalk sagged and creaked. A terrible sound met his ears, the sound of metal sagging and breaking, and he reacted without thinking.

There was a support strut next to him: he grasped it. The center of the catwalk snapped: he scrambled up into the web of crisscrossing steel struts. And then, quite suddenly, he found himself hanging upside-down, long blonde hair reaching for the floor, and didn’t feel dizzy at all.

Daxter, meanwhile, gagged.

Jak held his breath for a moment. A few moments later, the section of the catwalk clanged on the concrete floor, bounced, struck again, and rang with the impact. There was silence once more. His apprehension eased, Jak reached to his left and began scrambling along the web. He never even considered stepping onto the catwalk again – the mere thought made him anxious.

Daxter clung to his shoulder, changing his grip with the pull of gravity. Jak had not spoken another word since he had been released from the treatment chair. He wondered why not; Jak had always been silent – heck, he’d been born mute – but considering the words that had come out of the man’s mouth only minutes earlier, Daxter expected him to be talkative. He had tried several times to make conversation; each time, the response was either silence, or a twitch of a limb or facial feature – his nonverbal answer.

With his nimble movements and surprising agility, Daxter half-expected him to whip out a grapple and simply swing the rest of the way across the chasm.

As it was, Jak dropped the ground on the opposite side of the room and remained crouched, scurrying to the wall and suddenly stopping cold. His head lowered, weight carried evenly on his arms and crouched legs, he listened carefully.

The whirr of machinery told him that he was close to the processor’s conveyor belt; all he had to do was follow the belt through a narrow tunnel of glowing red lights and steam, squeeze through a tight crawl space, and he would be halfway out of the facility.

A crawl space?

Claustrophobia momentarily seized him: every muscle in his lean, feline form went suddenly very rigid, but he dismissed it and continued onward, following a conduit along the floor and praying that it would lead to where he wanted to go.

Sparks rained down around him from an overhead power conduit, whose joint had ruptured: he was crouched on the edge of a small ledge that jutted out over a long black conveyor belt, which wasn’t moving. All machinery had been shut down, save for a power converter that provided electricity to the belt; this was what was whirring softly.

Silently, he leapt out, and Daxter swallowed hard. He needn’t have worried: Jak landed on his two feet on the belt, so softly that he made no noise. He stood straight for a moment, cocking his head and listening; but there was no sound, and he turned and sprinted down the belt, toward the tunnel.

Daxter’s fur stood on end down the center of his back. Jak was too calculating, too quiet, too swift, too powerful, and too intelligent. Whatever the Krimzon Guard had been doing to him for two long years, they had somehow engineered a killer.

Jak’s breath had hardly quickened; he slid to a stop and smoothly half-crouched, stepping into the tunnel with eerie gracefulness. Steam hissed around him, and he paused mid-stride. There seemed nothing human about him as he waited for the hot steam to subside.

“Um, Jak…?” Daxter began.

Bang. Jak barely managed to dodge the solid steel that dropped from the ceiling, revealing a long shaft that disappeared into nothingness. He blinked at it, and then peered up. A sign painted on the side of the shaft, about half a meter up, said Garbage – caution.

“Jak!” Daxter cried in alarm.

With scarcely a sound the blonde had already leapt, catching a pipe that ran up the side of the shaft, scaling it with swift, measured movements. Steam hissed out of a slit in the metal and burned his skin. He gritted his teeth, feeling his limbs become heavier the higher he went. About seven meters up, the steam collected on the sides of the shaft. Although Jak tried his hardest, the metal was far too slippery.

So, he turned and sprang, grasping a vent on the far side. He slipped; his fingers caught the edge of the rusted metal and hung on. His bones cried in agony.

Hang on…

Daxter scrabbled at his shoulder, struggling to hold on.

And then, quite suddenly, Jak was laying belly-down on rotted metal – the fact that it was so old that it was rotted made him scowl – with his eyes peering into absolute darkness. Daxter blinked, his acute sense of eyesight picking up a faint light just below the range of human eyesight.

Jak scrambled forward. His back, slightly hunched, brushed the ceiling of the vent. His fingertips carried his full weight; within a few minutes, he became tired and knelt to rest.

Daxter blinked again; the light was the slightest bit brighter.

X

“We don’t get paid enough for this.” Hitch felt the need to complain once more, kicking violently and clearing his path of a half-rotted cardboard box. His hips jerked quite suddenly to the side as the box floated back, brushing against his slick red armor.

Kitana gazed at him momentarily, wishing she had selected Verheiden in the place of Hitch – at least Verheiden was soft-spoken and attractive, intelligent in the field of strategy. Hitch, on the other hand, was the intelligent knot head that most preferred to leave out of sewer patrols. Still, he was good with his hands… at least, when it came to weapons upgrades, lock picking, and things of that sort. In other words, there were a lot of security measures down here.

One of which Kitana walked face-first into.

Hitch didn’t bother to laugh; he rubbed his index finger on the crescent tattooed on his left cheek, a habit that seemed to signify good luck. He gazed upon the iron-link fence. “Watchful must you be,” he warned, accent thickening slightly, “if you plan on continuing down your present path.”

Kitana had decked a fellow member of her unit only once recently, and that had been Dylan for blunt insubordination. The desire to reach out and pummel Hitch’s tattooed mug in itched beneath her fingernails like acid; she ignored it for the moment.

“Hitch, give us a break,” she barked at him.

Ignorance is bliss, she thought, as he walked right past her, pulling out his special cutting device – out of where, she often wondered – and aiming the soldering end at the weakest point: where link was tied firmly to post. With a flash of heat that Dylan, standing far in the back, could feel, he began carefully cutting the antiquated iron from its anchor.

Clank. One end of a string of links, no longer held in place by the post, fell to the floor.

Kitana paced slightly, staring into the darkness and listening.

X

Peering through a grate, Jak spied a trio of guards, all of them wearing the slender battle armor rather than the bulky ceremonial armor. Curiosity made him bend lower, the metal creaking in protest; one of the guards, a burly blonde one, glanced down the hallway.

“What was that?” he growled.

One of the guards was asleep, leaning against a doorframe. His hands were still wrapped around his rifle, holding it at hip level, ready to defend himself. The other guard, tall and lanky, peered down the hall – left and right – before glaring at the blonde.

“That’s nothing, Gunderson,” he grunted. He yawned deeply. “Besides, if anything was in here, you know that no one would tell us anyways…”

The vent above them popped violently. All three guards, even the one that had been asleep, whirled, training their weapons on the sound. It was not repeated.

“I’m out in two more weeks for leave,” the lanky guard commented. He raised the weapon enough to look down its scope. “I’m looking forward to it…”

“You won’t get that far, Kylba,” Gunderson offered. “In fact, I think–”

“Gunderson, remember who your superior is,” Kylba hissed over his shoulder.

“Erol,” the blonde answered simply.

The third guard snickered.

Kylba kept his weapon trained on the vent, but now he was focused on Gunderson. “No, dimwit,” Kylba barked. “The authority goes like this: commander, lieutenant commander, lieutenant. As in, Erol, Finch, then me.” He smiled slightly. “When Erol’s not around, Finch is in charge. When Finch isn’t around, then I’m the superior officer. So, remember who your sup–”

Was about as far as Kylba got before something big and fast and angry burst out of the vent, tearing huge holes in the metal on the way through. Kylba refocused on the threat, laid a finger on the trigger, and sent about thirty rounds of plasma in the Thing’s direction. Half of them hit the walls; the rest hit the creature itself. It howled, whirled, and came right at them.

“Holy – shoot!” Kylba screamed.

All three rifles unleashed a flurry of plasma bolts, spraying armor, clothing, and unprotected skin. Three rounds entered Jak’s arm; another few punched his shoulder. He turned, deciding against a full-frontal assault, and sprinted down the hallway, toward a bright light.

“What in heaven and all that is holy was that?” Gunderson shouted.

The third guard, who had until this point remained silent, only said, “Matrika’s cell brother.” And he blinked his light brown eyes and looked at the ceiling.

X

“Last one,” Hitch grunted, and slashed through a thick metal link. With a clang, the links fell to the ground, revealing passage deeper into the sewers.

Kitana hefted her rifle to her shoulder. “Remind me to fix that,” she mumbled. “Let’s move.”

Flashlights switched on, attaching to the barrels of the rifles with subtle clicks. Water sloshed around their leather combat boots as they moved single-file into the dark hallway. She listened: in the distance, she heard the angry bark of a staff-grunt – the biped Metal Heads who carried long energy staffs that, when they hit their target, electrocuted it with a bolt of electricity ranging somewhere between twenty-five thousand and thirty-five thousand volts.

And sometimes, just for the heck of it, they carried plasma pistols and arc shields. That was when they became scary.

She half-expected one to leap out of the darkness.

“Private?”

She jumped; Hitch’s voice was completely unexpected. “Hitch? What is it?”

“What’s that?” he said, and pointed.

Dead ahead, a sewer pipe bent to the right in a violent J-shape. A bank of lights illuminated a tight tunnel leading into darkness and… at the end of it, a bright light. A rumble could heard from beyond that lasted about thirty seconds… a rush of cold air… the crash of metal on metal, and then…

Absolute silence once more.

Decker scratched his lower back absently – a habit that irritated his unit. “I think we’re next to the Transit Station,” he muttered. “Or maybe just one of the tunnels. Those mag-lev trains scare the–”

Knowing what he was about to say, Hitch faced him. “Which is why they aren’t mag-lev trains,” he interjected, causing Decker to seal his lips quite suddenly. “Instead, they are fully-automated electric trams running on center tracks and a cable overhead.” A smile widened his mouth as he squeezed into the small tunnel, blocking the distant light.

“That’s nice – Hitch!” Kitana held herself from panicking. Hitch had issues with disobeying the orders of superior officers, anyway. “Hitch! Get back here!”

Hitch was already gone.

“You know what ‘hitch’ rhymes with…” Dylan shouted, before Kitana squeezed into the tunnel behind him, cursing her chest. Why had she taken this assignment, she thought, and once more came to the conclusion that she was crazy. This isn’t right. She heard the other soldiers following her and sidestepped the rest of the way – out onto a concrete platform lit with soft blue light.

“Hitch?” she said softly.

The soldier had vanished into one of the many shadows surrounding the platform. To the right, the two-meter-wide platform curved along the tunnel until it vanished into absolute shadow. To the left, the platform stretched out, completely flat and straight, for fifty meters before the lights dimmed completely and the tunnel was left in shadow.

“Hitch,” she tried again, and froze.

Something moved. Instantly, her rifle went up, and she held up one hand – the signal for quiet. The other two soldiers raised their rifles up, backs slightly bent, fanning out for a better view of the platform. They all kept their rifles trained on different areas.

Out the corner of one eye, she spied a flicker of movement. Distantly, the scrabble of claws on concrete drew her attention – but she knew better than to turn her back on the movement.

As their commander would say, Eyes forward, both of them open. Don’t turn your back, don’t look away – and whatever you do, never lower your eyes from your rifle sight.

That advice was sound; after all, he was still alive after far too many missions and patrols, some of which had taken him down into these same tunnels and sewers.

“Hitch…”

From the shadows strode Hitch’s slender form. His hair was damp, tattooed cheeks streaked with grime, full lips pursed slightly, hands hanging at his sides. His fingers crossed over each other – pop, pop – as they entered the light, revealing bronzed skin tainted with… blood.

“I am here,” he murmured.

Kitana didn’t lower her rifle. “Hitch?” she asked softly. Her eyes narrowed; a pulse of adrenaline rushed into her brain, causing it to prickle. “What’s going on?”

Hitch was visibly trembling.

Kitana distantly wondered, Why?

Then she noticed the blood.

Her rifle wavered just a little bit. “Hitch,” she murmured, voice cracking, “what’s that from?”

He raised his hands, palms outward. His eyes were distant: a drastic change had taken place, his demeanor changing from his previous pleasant one. “Riyen,” he replied softly.

The young Private went pale.

What…

Hitch seemed to read her mind. With deliberate movements, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and proceeded forward. He stopped before her, eyes meeting hers directly.

She swallowed.

“Your call, Private,” he said softly. His fingers crossed over each other again, as if attempting to rid themselves of the blood. “We can continue onward and investigate the reports we were sent here for, I can show you where Riyen fell, or we can return to the surface.” He shrugged. “Whichever way you choose, we will follow willingly, of course.”

Of course.

Kitana knew that her soldiers would follow her to the ends of the planet, down into glass-sided pits with no hope of escape, back her in the deadliest of firefights… She shook her head. Hitch had heightened senses, which he had taught himself through his teenage years, spent studying his homeland’s culture and mythology. He was thus invaluable, able to hear, see, smell what others could not even brush. For these reasons and others, despite his occasional arrogance, Kitana trusted his instincts.

“What do you believe we should do?” she asked him.

His eyes sparkled in the light. “Keep going to the site of the reports,” he responded.

“Why do we have to go to the dig site?” Dylan asked quietly.

Kitana wondered that herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted solemnly. “If we cut across the tracks to the pit and climb down the shale stairs, we could find the Metal Heads and eradicate them.” Her rifle finally lowered from its position. “Clean and simple.”

Dylan scoffed quietly.

And so, with a gesture from the Private, the soldiers hopped off the edge of the platform, filed across the tracks, and entered a hallway marked with warning signs in three different languages.

It was a long, dark hallway that stretched as far as the eye could see. At first, it was a concrete-lined hallway with normal white lights set into the ceiling. The sound of military-issue boots could be heard on the floor for many meters as they filed past welded doors, security airlocks, and slender ducts that led back to the surface through winding turns. About two hundred meters along, however, the shaft sloped downward and twisted near-violently to the right. Through a security airlock, down a flight of grillwork metal stairs… and the shaft became a network of catacombs carved into the stone and dirt. The harsh white overhead lights had been replaced by softly pulsing red lights strung along an electrical conduit, casting soft red-edged shadows around the group. The sounds of their footfalls had become the sound of iron-rich red earth being crushed, very softly. The smell was vibrant, an earthly smell of cave precipitation, of cracked minerals, of worn stone and hot electrical conduits.

Within a few minutes, they stepped out into a cavernous dig ringed by a five-meter-wide platform – below which was an enormous drop to a subterranean pool. Overhead, a metal staircase spiraled up to an opening, through which was the top-secret section of the citadel. Stalactites dripped collected mist and glittered with unknown minerals; stalagmites, painted with many earthly tones, seemed to reach upward like desperate hands seeking help from above; the cavern’s walls were painted iron-red, granite, and black.

Kitana measured with her eyes: it was about three kilometers to the bottom, another kilometer to the roof, and one and half kilometers across. Workers here had to remain on the many walkways and safety harnesses at all times… or suffer a long fall to the pool far below.

There were no excavators tonight: the Metal Heads, apparently arriving from a hive at the bottom, had scared them away for the time being. Only the shafts of powerful halogen lights, directed downwards by mirrors, revealed what waited far below.

“So, if we head this direction, we can enter the EX-023 from the central chamber,” Dylan murmured; his voice seemed considerably louder thanks to the steep walls of the shaft. “Zero-two-three is apparently where most of the sightings were taking place.”

The Private nodded. “All right. Lead the way, Dylan.”

X

The Excavation, as it was known, had begun long ago with a young archaeologist, Juneau. He had started by taking a random shovel to the earth that was now hard-packed high above. He dug until he hit solid rock, and curiosity overcame him. After months of gathering a small team of workers, he had begun digging through the then-young tunnels which would become, several centuries later, the Transit Tunnel network. It took three months to bore through solid rock with Yellow Eco laser cutters to a void that was decided to have been some sort of ancient magma tube.

Once the void was stabilized somewhat, Juneau entered with a powerful light and searched throughout the dark cavern. In the walls, he discovered, were fossilized remains of creatures unknown to him. Some appeared vaguely humanoid; others were small and animalistic.

Excavation began, and throughout several centuries of work, relics and odd artifacts were uncovered. As time went on, the shaft deepened considerably… and workers fell ill.

Worried that perhaps they had struck gaseous emissions or some other dangerous substance, the new leader of the excavation, Kyless, decided to cease work until a cause was determined. Only a few days later, the center of the floor collapsed to expose the subterranean pool. Many workers fell ill, some with psychological symptoms and others with physical abnormalities. A year later, the rest of the floor was removed, revealing a network of interlocking catacombs spanning hundreds of kilometers. But these were not the Precursian catacombs discovered three kilometers west: no, these were excavation tunnels far older and far more interesting. After carbon-dating and magnetic field testing was complete, it was discovered that the catacombs had gone through several magnetic field reversals – the magnetic north pole had flipped to the magnetic south, then back, and so forth – and the earth was about five thousand years into its time of isotopic decay. Analysis of active radioactive isotopes was inconclusive.

Kyless later discovered one possible source of the illnesses: an underground organic hub that, when analyzed, came back positive for electromagnetic fields and electron processing. The hub was some sort of communications device, so powerful that it could extend a possible fifty thousand light-years into deep space. Analysis of the affected workers revealed increased delta and theta wave activity. The increased delta wave activity suggested schizophrenia and dementia; theta activity suggested increased hippocampus alertness, and possibly an inability to process neural synapse information.

Realizing that the hub could be causing increased activity, all attempts were made to disconnect the hub and remove the delta and theta wave threats. All attempts failed.

And then, several years later, the hub simply turned off – not due to attempts from the workers, but it simply shut off, likely via an unknown source.

The hub had switched itself off about eight years ago, allow excavations to continue without much incident; however, the deactivation of the hub seemed to trigger an increase in Hive activity, causing more Metal Heads to turn up. The Dead Town Massacre occurred roughly seven years ago, during a spike in the activity of the collective consciousness.

X

Once he’d been sighted, he should have known that there was no way he was getting out of the citadel without being wildly shot at.

Hundreds of times.

From all fifty thousand directions.

Once I’m out, I am going to get a huge Eco bomb and just blow up the world. I swear.

Daxter, for once completely silent, simply clung to his friend’s shoulder with tooth and claw, whiskers twitching as the wind rushed by.

Hitting a dead end in the ducts, Jak had been forced to drop into the main hallway. He had been sighted immediately by a passing patrol, and the chase had begun. So far, he had run through a long, twisting security hallway, a hydroponics bay, an observation chamber, two medical bays, and an airlock above a hydraulic super-compression chamber.

Super-compression chamber.

That… that just might work.

Jak had seen what happened when people were shoved into the chamber. He had once observed, from behind double-paned reinforced glass, as Erol had shoved a prisoner inside and sealed it. He remembered hearing an ugly hiss-snap-pop as the chamber had sealed, leaving the helpless convict inside. The man had screamed, panicking and running about the room in search of an escape route.

Then came the moment when the chamber was activated. Hydraulic pumps forced air – way too much air – into the chamber. Oxygen hissed out. From his readings, Jak knew what would happen: bubbles would form in the bloodstream as pressure inside the veins increased. Blood would thicken in some places and thin in others. The organs would expand until they reached their limit… and then violently implode as the pressure increased further. Almost a minute after the compressors had begun their job, the man would be crushed by his own weight and the air pressure around him, implode, and crumple to the floor as a heap of bloodies bones, crushed tissue, and compressed brain jelly.

Jak had seen “bad” before, but this went beyond bad. It was a horrible way to die.

Jak had become horrible: the thought of sending those soldiers to their deaths inside the hydraulic compression chamber wasn’t something he’d shy away from.

And he didn’t.

He swung ninety degrees to the left, leading the soldiers down a hallway toward the chamber. Just before he reached it, he darted to the right. If he had played it right…

Yes.

The soldiers entered the chamber, searching for the renegade prisoner. Jak was already at the controls, throwing switches to seal the door and the men inside. He threw the green-handled lever and pressed the enormous glowing red button. The hydraulics groaned, squeaked violently, and hissed. Jak was already running away again when the screaming started.

X

“Is this it?” the Private asked.

“It is,” Dylan replied ever so softly so as to not disturb the ancient earth. He stepped forward, avoiding a tightly-wound conduit poking out of the ground. Another breath, and he was standing on the lip of an excavation pit about five meters in diameter.

Squeak… eek…

A red light pulsed faintly overhead; with a painful squeaking sound, Dylan carefully lowered the light until it glowed inside the pit.

“Where did you find Riyen?” Kitana asked Hitch.

The man gazed at her, not comprehending for a long moment. “Toward the edge of where the light met the dark in the Tunnel,” he responded quietly. “There wasn’t much left except a few ragged ligaments, some bones, and muscle tissue.” He closed his eyes. “And blood.”

Kitana winced. Riyen had been Hitch’s best friend. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

He looked at her. “Couldn’t tell it was him until I spied the ID tags,” he said.

Kitana shuddered this time.

The excavation pit was a good ten meters deep. Cables were coiled at the bottom, trailing up the sides and along the earth until they vanished into alcoves. There were old bones – half-fossilized, mostly, although some were brittle from age and wear.

“Are they all… fossils?” Dylan questioned.

Decker shook his head. “No. My brother was working this site, too. They dug up a lot of fossils, some bone beds, a ceremonial burial site, a mass grave… but there are more recent bones, too. They’re probably from those who excavated years ago.”

“And what are we looking for again?” Hitch asked. His eyes were bright again; despite the blood still crusted on his fingers, he was returning to his usual chipper self.

Kitana paced around the pit, eyeing it warily. “Any indication how or why the Metal Heads attacked the excavation group now rather than previously,” she growled. Her gaze captured Hitch’s steadily, unflinching. “Better if they attacked us.”

Hitch shook his head, pleasant attitude vanishing. “No, not better: worse.” He bit the words as if they hurt to be spoken. “Kitana, don’t tempt fate. What would four Krimzon Privates do against the might of a vicious pack of Hora-quan?” he added, referring to the Metal Heads by their traditional name. “We would be nothing.”

She faced him directly. “That’s why we have a direct link to reinforcements, right?” she growled, her fingers balling into a tight fist. “Now, start looking around.”

Hitch shrugged and obeyed.

The four soldiers spread out, searching for any openings or ways inside the site. All attacks had come from this area, Kitana mused. There had to be a way in, but even as the search extended into many minutes… thirty minutes… forty minutes… and longer, there seemed to be no obvious route for even a trickle of attacking scouts.

Wild yakow chase, Kitana hissed in her head. There nothing–

“Private?” Decker cried.

Immediately, the young woman perked and looked in his direction. In an alcove, where a mass of wires could be seen hanging from the roof, Kitana spied Decker pointing at a large mouth – beyond which was a faint yellowish light that pulsed slightly.

Kitana felt her blood chill.

“Decker,” she warned. A yellowish light, pulsing faintly, meant only one thing…

“Private, I think this–”

There was an explosion of movement. Kitana felt her breath knocked out, her vision darken… and only when she regained a grip on oxygen did she realize that she had been bowled over.

There were Hora-quan, scrambling from the tunnel…

And Decker…

Decker was simply… not there anymore.

X

A dash to the door, a scramble through a long hallway… and Jak found himself sliding down a slick aluminum tunnel, through a cascade of falling water, and then falling… off the end, splashing violently into a foot-deep pool of cold water.

Daxter sputtered, getting rid of the water that had entered his mouth. He shook then and smoothed out his fur with careful paws. A swift lick of the tongue along his backbone – Jak found it interesting how flexible these Ottsels were – ensured the flatness of his fur.

With a soft sigh, Jak sloshed through the water, sitting down on a chunk of concrete that had simply been tossed into the water without afterthought. A moment of rest was all he needed: yes, rest. Tired was he, and sleep-deprived for three days. His head pulsed with pains from exhaustion. His nerves tickled. His back hurt from being compressed from his strain, twisted positions brought on by his stress.

A shaft of sunlight glowed on the water.

Jak twisted, his back screaming for mercy. His hair fell over his shoulders – no longer held back by the prison garb, it was allowed to fall all the way, unheeded, to mid-back. He glanced in the water, catching a glimpse of his once-beautiful platinum-blonde hair. It was matted and filthy, twisted into braids from struggles in the cells. Instead of glistening in the sunlight from the outside, it merely turned from a brownish color to a dirty blonde.

Jak leaned closer, disgusted by what he saw. He hadn’t seen himself for a year.

What was this? This pale, pinched, man’s face wasn’t his. The hair was filthy, the eyebrows dark blonde and straggly, the lips thin and pale, the eyes…

His eyes.

The cerulean blue was tinged with violet now, painted deep with sadness, fear, a hatred that he could not place and knew wasn’t his own. Was it himself that he spied in those deep and too-solemn eyes, or was he looking into Reising’s tortured mind?

He stood then, throwing his hair back again and scrambling on stacked boxes toward the light source. The light was so bright that he couldn’t see anything else, but…

“Jak, look, we’re free! All thanks to me, of course.”

He caught of whiff of exhaust fumes, of grease and oil, of burning vegetation, of hot concrete and asphalt, of burning filth…

“Jak, look–”

And then he hit the ground beneath the opening, his legs buckling, his head impacting with the wall behind him so hard that he blacked out.

X

Dylan switched off the radio, cutting his commander’s shouted orders short and throwing himself back into the midst of battle. A crack of a rifle butt being slammed on a large head caused a shriek of pain from the creature and a dull thud as it collapsed to the ground.

“Kitana?” he shouted, searching for his current commanding officer. He cursed. “Kitana!”

“I’m busy!” she screamed, backing out of the tunnel leading to another pit with her rifle blazing. “What is it, Dylan? It better be important!”

“I radioed the commander, and I think he’s coming.” Crack. “I could hardly understand what he was saying but – Private! I think it’s time we returned to the Big Pit!”

She looked at him like he was insane. “And risk toppling over the edge to either die of hitting the water at the wrong angle or being flattened by impacting a stalagmite? No way!”

“It’s better than getting eaten alive!” he cried.

“Let me just say that I agree with the whole ‘it’s better than getting eaten alive’ thing,” Hitch called out, swinging his rifle to bash down another approaching scout.

Dylan’s rifle ran dry. He cursed it and attempted to reload it with one hand; the other sought out the eight-inch blade that all Krimzon Guards were required to have in case of emergencies.

Don’t let me down, baby, Dylan thought wildly. That blade had cut him out of organic whips, nets, cable traps, the jaws of a giant desert predator, and an assault by a pair of mercenaries in an alleyway.

He slashed it at a Metal Head.

–slice–

Its head rolled to the ground.

They retreated all the way back to the central chamber and raced around to the opposite side. All this did was give Kitana additional time to watch the influx of the enormous living sea of Hora-quan. She felt her heart suddenly go very still.

And this is how it ends – with the rifles blazing.

And then a shadow passed over her, momentarily blocking out the shaft of sunlight that hit her almost directly. She felt a strong arm tighten viciously around her waist, pulling her back from the edge – she had been about to fall over. She supposed the adrenaline must have made her lose concentration.

“Get behind us! Get behind us!” a voice barked at the three soldiers.

Kitana blinked, regaining control, and looked at the man who had pulled her back. He had removed his arm and was now fully engaged in firing upon the huge mass – along with approximately sixteen other soldiers, who were unloading everything they had.

She caught a flash of fire red, a determined expression painted on ivory skin–

Her strength returning, she rejoined the fight.

Their commander had come on quick wings with reinforcements.

The cavalry had arrived.